These two terms are often used interchangeably but they are subtly different, so here’s the bottom line on the difference between being plant based vs vegan.
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Category: Nutrition
3 things to watch out for going Vegan
Deciding to switch your diet is one of the hardest things to do in the long term but can also be one of the strongest levers you can pull to improve your health. I am not talking crash diets for a few weeks here just to drop a few pounds for that big night out coming up. Anyway I digress here, back to your decision to go vegan. I was vegan / plant based for a number of years, and these are my top 3 things to watch out for.
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How to Lose the Christmas Weight
Christmas is a tricky time for weight management, that’s for sure. It follows hot on the heels from Halloween at the end of October, which is itself often a sugar-fest. So by the time December 1st comes around, we could start compounding any weight gain experienced from Halloween. On top of that, in Ireland, the darker wintry months start to kick in around November and this can often be a trigger for many people to consume more food than is necessary, in an almost hibernating fashion.
So this year I tracked my own experience of the holiday season for Christmas 2021 and here’s what I learnt.
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Unboxing the GI Effects Gut Health Test
The GI Effects Comprehensive Stool test from Genova Diagnostics is one of the best tests out there for assessing the health of your gut. It uses PCR analysis and culturing from the samples you provide to give you deep insights into the current state of your gut health.
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Gut Health
Gut health is a hot topic out there right now. Since Covid-19 has made PCR testing a household phrase, it seems gut health testing might be a little easier to understand now for some. But what do we actually mean by “gut health” and how do we test it?
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Contracting Covid-19
It was December 28th 2020 on a cold, wet and wintry afternoon trip to Ikea to pick up some much-anticipated online purchases. Delivery was not an option on this occasion and after spending much of Christmas house bound with restricted movements under the latest Covid-19 restrictions, I was glad of the excuse to collect some new furniture. Long queues and physical distancing were maintained outside but once inside, the usual Ikea busyness took over and it was not uncommon to bounce off people as you wandered nosily from room to room letting your imagination run wild. Interesting to note how easy it was to spot a few people that chose to not wear a mask indoors, as they now stood out from the crowd. It was an enjoyable day and the retail therapy worked, I felt good.
5 days later, I tested positive for Covid-19.
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Back 2 College
Heading into my final year 4 of Nutritional Science and Therapeutics now. Assignments are already building, deadlines looming and the general level of busyness is increasing.
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Writing My 1st Book
I am in the middle of writing my 1st ever book. It will be a cookbook compiling and curating all my favourite recipes into one place. As I am embarking on my final year (4 of 4!) in Nutritional Therapy in a few short weeks time, I routinely provide meal ideas to my clients to help them make better choices around food and improvements in personal performance.
I am, like many of you, a busy parent, husband, employee, friend, colleague and son – so many hats! I like simple recipes that call for a handful of well chosen ingredients, which when carefully combined can get nourishing wholefoods onto the table with minimal fuss so everyone can fill up and be happy.
I personally road test each and every recipe and tweak it for my own personal twist where possible.
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Are You Taking Statins?
Hypercholesterolaemia is a condition characterised by an excess of cholesterol in the blood. An alternative term is dyslipidaemia, which encompasses elevated triglycerides, low levels of HDL-C, and high LDL-C (1).
Hypercholesterolaemia is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and arterial disease and is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States (2).
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How SAD is the Standard American Diet?
America is in a troubled place right now.
Leaving aside the recent chaos that began in Minneapolis, and the leadership crisis they have in the White house, its 328 million people are under siege from their own food choices. While the temporary nature of the rioting will pass when the media eventually gets bored of covering it or it no longer stimulates clicks, likes, posts and reactions across the fickle social media world, the deep systemic problems arising from the food culture in America will be its ultimate demise in my opinion.
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Is Turmeric Good For You?
Following on from Is Resveratrol Worth The Hype? comes the mighty Turmeric. Turmeric is a plant from the same family as ginger and grows natively in the India and Southeast Asia region. It looks very similar to the ginger root, with the bright orange colour of turmeric being the main physical difference.
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Is Resveratrol Worth The Hype?
Much has been touted about the benefits of this little plant compound over the years with lots of claims about its protective influence against cancers, cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions. The headlines seem to always revolve around drinking wine, unsurprisingly – it’s almost as if we just want to be told to drink more wine, it’s good for you!
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The Mediterranean Diet: It’s Not Just the Food
While the exact mechanisms by which the components of this diet may improve cardiovascular health does require further research, the cumulative effects of higher fibre intake, antioxidants, healthy fats including the essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, protein and complex carbohydrates all appear to contribute to an overall reduction in inflammatory markers (hs-CRP, IL-6,7,18), oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, blood pressure, insulin resistance, blood glucose dysregulation, LDL, HDL, total cholesterol levels and body weight (3, 4, 6, 7).
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The Mediterranean Diet
Cardiovascular disease is a favourite topic of mine so when it comes to dietary interventions to prevent and reverse heart disease, the Mediterranean diet (MD) is right up there, alongside a whole-food plant based diet low in sugars as the best dietary choices available.
Here’s my take on this dietary approach.
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Going Dairy Free
I’ve done a lot of self-experiments over the years – gluten free, vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, paleo, 365 days alcohol free, standing vs seating desks, smartphone vs dumb phone, caffeine free, 30 day fitness challenges. I have learnt a lot from doing these trials and testing out what works or doesn’t work for me. A human guinea pig if you will.
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To Test or Not To Test
Nutritional therapy often involves diagnostic testing to help us figure out what’s going wrong with our clients. Diagnostics may include stool tests, adrenal stress tests, hormone tests like thyroid, urine, bone resorption…the list goes on. They are a very useful component to any NT protocol.
I have been reviewing and studying the GI-MAP stool based test from Invivo Healthcare in the UK recently.
Here’s a quick overview.
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So What Exactly is Functional Medicine?
The area of functional medicine is an emerging area. It is probably in the storming or forming stages of establishment and development as it rubs up against conventional medicine and it remains to be seen how the two can co-exist.
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Finding the Truth in Nutrition
My interest in nutrition started with a single question.
Did diet and lifestyle choices have any bearing on my Dad’s heart disease and ultimate passing in 2011?
I watched my Dad goes through 4 (yes 4) quadruple bypass surgeries where they moved healthy veins from his legs and transplanted them into his chest to restore blood flow to his heart that was being negatively impacted by blockages in his arteries. It is a deeply invasive but life saving surgery that arguably kept him alive for another 10 or so years.
Reflections on Cancer
Cancer: the mega disease predicted to affect 1 in 2 of us in the coming years, if not already. It’s a scary topic, almost everyone I know has been affected in some shape or form by this disease or their family has. It appears to be rampant and getting worse with each passing year.
So when I read that we were going to spend an entire day diving into this very topic as part of my Nutritional science qualification, I was super excited.
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Them Bones Them Bones Need Calcium
In the early 1990’s there was a classic ad aired on Irish TV that featured a skeleton man proclaiming the virtues of drinking cow’s milk for the calcium benefit for our bones. Let’s jump in the time machine and check this one out for a sec…
The Health Project 